Libby poll bump seems unlikely for Bush

One question political observers had when President Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence was, not surprisingly, a coldy political one. Would sparing the former top White House aide from jail time help or hurt Bush in the polls?

There were those (including this blog) who thought it would help Bush because he would gain support among his base of conservatives. Presumably most of those folks felt that Libby’s conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was wrong. While early polling is incomplete, it’s looking like Bush won’t be getting much of a bump at all. And the reason appears to be that a fair number of Republicans disapprove of commuting Libby’s sentence.

Pollster.com analyzes a recent American Research Group poll about the Libby commutation. Of the AGR survey, Pollster.com says:

The results are strongly structured by party identification, which is certainly no surprise. Only 13% of Democrats and 19% of Independents approved of the commutation, while 50% of Republicans approved. However, as with the SurveyUSA poll, a substantial fraction of Republicans disapproved– 47% in the ARG poll. Unfortunately, we can’t tell for sure how many of these disapproved because they wanted a full pardon compared to how many disapproved because they wanted Libby to serve out his sentence….

When asked if they favored a full pardon for Libby, 23% of Republicans said they did. If we make the extreme assumption that ALL of these said they disapproved of Bush’s commutation, then 47%-23%=24% of Republicans disapproved the commutation AND did not want a pardon, implying they thought Libby should serve his jail sentence. This is certainly an underestimate since it is doubtful that the pro-pardon group were entirely in the disapprove of commutation category, but it at least sets a lower limit on support for jail among Republicans. As with the SurveyUSA poll, this suggests a significant fraction of Republicans thought Libby should serve time in jail.

A new Newsweek poll puts Bush’s approval rating at 26 percent, which is on the lower end of where he was before he commuted Libby’s sentence.